Chapter 1 - Surreal Experience

"hah. . . .hah. . . hah. . ." a young man panted as he was running in a eerie forest and confusion can be seen in his face. As he get his bearing together, he began to asked himself.

"Why am I running? Is this a forest? Why am I here? What am I doing here? What am I running away from?"

Even with so much unanswered questions, the young man still continued running. Why? The reason was actually very simple.

Ever since he came to be, he had felt that if he was to stop running, something irreversible is going to happen. So he could only continue to run with the hope of getting out of the eerie forest.

And aside from that, he had also felt an extremely intense gaze directed toward him which gave him goosebumps.

Despite his fears, the young man took the courage to looked behind him, which was the general direction of when the intense gaze came from. What he saw was silhouette of a large snake-like creature chasing after him. When he met the ethereal blue eyes of his chaser, chills run down his spine as he had cold sweat on his back. Also, the sense of danger became apparent to him.

The young man took the only action he could think of. And that is to run with all of his might.

The young man ran for his life.

Time passed by for who knows how long, but for the young man, it felt like eternity. His surrounding scenery began to change, becoming less eerie with a little more light. But even so, with his chaser still in the rear, he had to be on guard as he ran as fast as he could to avoid being caught.

Who knows what will happen if the large snake-like creature caught him?

"It shouldn't be long before I exit from this gloomy forest. Hopefully, the creature chasing me would stop after I leave here." the young man assured himself. Even to this moment, he can still feel the cold gaze of his chaser.

Noticing that he was almost out of the forest, the young man ran even faster, dedicating every fiber of his being into legs.

As the young man got out of the forest, he was welcomed by a blinding light, indicating that he had exited out of the forest. But when his eyes adjusted to light, he was surprised to see that he is now falling from a very deep ravine.

"Ahhhhhh!" the young man screamed on the top of his lungs, closing his eyes as he prepare for his impending fall to the hard ground of the ravine.

[Boom!] the impact came.

To his surprise though, the young man did not feel any pain. He had thought that he would be losing consciousness but it did not happen.

Contrary, he can actually feel that he is still conscious. In fact, he even felt refreshed. The same feeling one would feel when diving into a pool of cold water on a hot summer. Totally refreshing.

Then, he came to his senses.

The young man found himself in a dimly lit room. Although small, it was very neat and well-organized. Equipped with only a cabinet, a bed, a table and a chair, the room gave him a sense of peace.

As the young man move around, he was surprised that instead of walking, he was actually floating, flying even, in midair. He was in a soul form.

"What am I doing in this room? Am I already dead? Did I die from the fall?" the young man asked. Even voicing it out wanting somebody to answer them for him, if there was even anybody who can.

He just had such a crazy experience. And now, he's a ghost.

Face with his current circumstances, he became lost in thought trying to find logical answer to his questions and also accept his current predicament. Took him a while to take it all in.

[su. .ha. .su. .ha. .]

Suddenly, a rhythmic breathing can be heard which broke his lost-in-thought mode. This also made him aware that he was not alone in the room.

"Hmm, there seems to be a person sleeping. Must be the owner of this room."

The young man flew, closing the small distance from him to the bed, floating directly on top of the person sleeping in it to get a clear view of the person's face.

"Huh!"

What the young man saw shocked him senseless.

"It can't be. This cannot be true."

With disbelief written all over his ghostly face, the young man again began inspect at the person sleeping on the bed. He also took this chance to get a better look at the room.

What he found was that the room was actually his own room. And with that, the person sleeping on the bed was none other than himself.

"What the hell if going on here? What happened to me? Why am I outside my body? Am I still alive? Or am I dead? But my sleeping self is still breathing so I may be alive, right?"

More questions flooded in his mind as he try to find a logical answer to all of them.

After a while of thinking, he was still unable to answer them.

The ghost young man went over directly into the person, trying to fit in and see if he would wake up. He also tried several of other his ideas like trying to wake his sleeping self by force or entering his physical body, he gave up after none of them work.

For the last time, the ghost young man looked into his physical face. After a careful look, he came to a conclusion that it was really himself, without a doubt, as they have the same facial features. He could only accept his fate.

Suddenly, the person sleeping on the bed abruptly opened his eyes. As they were directly parallel with each other, they are now seeing eye-to-eye.

And then. . .

"Wahhhhh!" the young man, both his ghost form and physical form, screamed in unison.

- - - - - -

Waking up from a very crazy but surreal dream, Rayne abruptly sat up in bed panting. He took a few minutes to catch his breathes and calm down. He quickly got out of bed and noticed that he was soaked with sweat, as if he just had finished a full marathon.

"What the." he exclaimed as he wipe himself with a towel.

Deep in thought as he came to realization of how absurd of a dream he just had. The scary part was the fact that he was able to recall the dream very vividly, as if the event really took place.

"What a realistic dream?" he thought out loud, still amazed by it.

What he didn't know was that this was the start of a new life for him.